Scary Video Shows Why Trailer Training is so Necessary

A scary video published by the Daily Mail on 24 April (2016) makes it clear why trailer training is so necessary – even if a driver is not required to have a Category C1 licence or a B+E entitlement. The video shows an incident in Australia that could have ended a lot worse than it actually did.

The video in question was taken by a dash cam mounted in a passenger vehicle travelling down a motorway in Perth, on Australia’s west coast. At the start of the video, you can see a Subaru towing a trailer to the far right of the screen. As the trailer starts to wobble the driver of the Subaru loses control to the extent that both car and trailer start to spin wildly across the road. The vehicle with the camera appears to be right in the path of the Subaru.

At one point in the video a female passenger yells at the driver to get out of the way of the Subaru. That driver was able to swerve to the left at just the right moment to avoid a collision. Had the two cars struck one another, the consequences could have been devastating.

According to the official Daily Mail story, the driver of the Subaru hit his brakes when the trailer started wobbling, leading to a loss of control. If that is true, it demonstrates once again why trailer training is so necessary.

Knowing How to Handle Emergencies

Part of the trailer training we provide at the HGV Training Centre deals directly with knowing how to handle emergencies on the road. For example, hitting the breaks is the last thing a driver should do if a trailer begins to wobble. Hitting the brakes causes exactly the loss of control shown in the video described above. If a driver hits the brakes too hard, the trailer can jack-knife and cause the entire ring to overturn.

In the event of a wobbling trailer, the best thing to do is immediately take your foot off the accelerator and hold the steering wheel steady. The trailer should stop wobbling almost instantly. Then the driver can proceed slowly until a safe place can be found to pull off and check things over.

Whether the Subaru driver in the video ever received trailer training or not we will never know. But we can say this: there is really no excuse for getting on the road with a trailer in tow without first undergoing training. Even if a driver is not required to have a B+E entitlement or a Category C1 licence, training is necessary to prepare one for the challenges of trailer towing.

The HGV Training Centre offers trailer training at all of our facilities. Contact us to learn more about class schedules in your area. With just a small investment of your time and finances, you can learn to safely tow so that you do not put yourself or other drivers in jeopardy.

Sources:

Daily Mail – https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3556838/Family-driving-Perth-freeway-catch-car-spin-control.html